The Twelve Steps of AA (4.5 Hrs) – Part 1 of 4 – 2017 – Sandy B.

My name's Scott, and I'm an alcoholic. And because of a loving God that you people have introduced me to, I'm gone already. I haven't had a drink since April 22nd, 1985. And I started crying while I was sitting down there. Colleen got up, and she said the beautiful thing that you guys say out here, where you tell everybody this is who I am, this is how long I've got this thing. and I just welled up. I love being here. I love Being With You Guys is my Midwestern home group. I have a lot of people who are very important to me in this room, a lot OF people who I really love, a guy who I sponsor is here, my friend Dick, and a lot Of friends, Mark and Zelda, and a Lot OF people who I just have known for a long time. I first came out, the first time I ever talked out of town, which I thought was a bizarre thing that they asked me. I thought I was being set up for a hit or something. I come from the Bronx, and it's not impossible, you know? And the first time I ever talked out of town was at a mini-conference in Omaha, and I fell in love with you people then and have been in love avec you ever since. And I just can't tell you how grateful I am that you asked me to come out this weekend. I'll be talking for 75 hours today, and I'll be giving my meatloaf recipe out by about 5 o'clock. The schedule's a little different this afternoon. We'll talk about that later. But we'll start out this morning. I'm going to be talking about the steps, and I will be making references to two non-conference approved pieces of literature. I'll tell you what they are now so we can just get out of the way. My personal favorite history of Alcoholics Anonymous is a book called Not God, written by a guy named Kurtz. It's a non-conference approved piece of literature. So if you're new, it's not something you have to read. You're going to hear me make some references to it as the day goes by. I have found it to be something that has enriched my sobriety. And the other piece of literature is a books by Emmett Fox called The Sermon on the Mount. And it doesn't matter if you are Christian or not a Christian. The fact is it's one of the pieces of literature that was being read by the people who framed the big book of AA. And in it, there are things in it like Bill makes reference in the big book to varieties of spiritual experience by a guy named William James. And in that book, which Bill was reading before they framed the big book, people tell their stories. They tell their individual stories about how they had a spiritual experience. And, you know, it's pretty clear that that's one of the reasons, you know, one ofthe things that was taken advantage of by Bill and the early The AA's and the Oxford group are telling your story of identification. And, you know, apparently one of the reasons why we so much of our book is dedicated to personal stories because ultimately that's all I have is my story. And this is different for me today because I'm being asked to do something that I normally try to not do. When I give a talk in AA, I might start thinking I'm so sort of, you now, accomplished as an alcoholic. A bizarre phrase, I think. in the upper echelon of degeneracy that I could actually stop telling my story and start commenting on AA as a whole, the sweep of history, the state of the art. And then I think I'm dead. I could become a circuit drinker pretty easy at that point. And I can talk about different things. A friend of mine in AA talks about AA trends. I love to hear him talk because he's one of these guys with 45 years who says, from his point of view, there is no good old days. You know? The good old day better be right now. They better be Right Now, and if they're not, you ought to take a look at what you're doing, you know? Because it says in our book, a fellowship will spring up around you, and you can have the fellowship that you crave in AA. That has been my experience, and the minute I give up on that, then I'll start pointing a finger and saying, boy, it's really turned to crap, and it has because I have. and so I really feel very strongly that I have to tell my story and I'm going to tell my story today but I've been asked to do a little bit more so I'm gonna endeavor to do that and talk about my personal experience with the steps I have a sort of a request to make of you and a challenge to make I am gonna ask you plead with you implore you to not take anything I say today as an indictment of what you're doing with the steps or the program. I have no idea how you should do this. I do not think for one second that I do it right. I know I do. Perfectly for me. I haven't had a damn drink in 14 years. And I cannot stop drinking. I had hand surgery a couple weeks ago and I was told that I needed general anesthetic. Oh, general anesthetics. Oh, general anesthetic Normal people don't get excited about general anesthetics They do Normal people go, oh, general anaesthetic And I'll tell you why You're asleep for general anesthesia You don't sleep for general anaesthetic You don' t get to stay up and enjoy general ana... That's why they call it You're generally anesthetized But I'll tell you why I love it. When they give it to you, they say count backwards from 100. So you go 199, boom. I love 99. I do. I love 99. Mm-mm, mm-mm-mm. But here's the difference, I won't trade my life in for 99 anymore. And I never got, you know, I only had 99 a couple of times, then I just spent the rest of my life chasing 99. I'd see 99, I'd hear other people talk about 99, but I only have 99 a few times. I just traded my life for it. I live like a loser, loser, looser, loser. I settled for a nickel today when I could have a quarter tomorrow every day of the week. And one of the reasons that they say stay in today, live in today. Get right in the middle of that clap. Live it one day at a time. Which is one of things Emmett Fox talks so beautifully about when he takes apart the Sermon on the Mount sentence by sentence and he discusses the section on resist not evil, which I'm going to talk more about today. Don't make oaths. Don't take proclamations. Stay right here, right now. He talks about it perfectly. You know, there is nothing new in the 12 steps. If you've studied them at all, you'll know that these are ancient ideas. They're ideas AA didn't come up with anything new. They came up with a way, a presentation. They cameup with away so that alcoholics could buy the package and they worked diligently very hard right up to the last moment of pressing that big book. They had to keep making changes to keep the loopholes out. Now, I know that if you're new, this probably is not going to work for you. We've got a membership of 2 million people. We're in 150 countries. We've Got 98,000 groups, but I'm sure we won't be able to help you. And the group that we came from, the Oxford group, experienced something similar to a group called the Washingtonians. And if you've studied AA history at all, the Washingtonian's are a fascinating group to take a look at. They were a group dedicated to the cause of sobriety that went away just like the Oxford Group pretty much for the same reason. They got into politics, they got into money, property and prestige, they Got into personalities and celebrity. And the fact that their leader was trying to make contact with Hitler during the Second World War didn't really help him a lot. But I judge no man. The Washingtonians were huge. In order for us to have a group the size of the Washingtonians in the United States right now, AA has 2 million people membership roughly internationally. We would have to have 10 million people in AA in America alone in order to equal the size and ratio of the Washingtons. We're talking huge. Abraham Lincoln talked at one of their commencements. They don't exist. People don't know about them. Only people my experience is the only people who know about him is the people in A.A. who use them as as a lesson, you know, and it's because from my point of view and from the experience of a lot of other people I respect, it's they they took the turn that we have constantly. What a beautiful thing that you guys read the 12 concepts here and which is sort of the you know if you're new it's one of the great corporate diagrams I've ever seen in my life. If you get the pamphlet that talks about GSO and the concepts, it has a, I believe, I don't know if it still does, but it used to have a pyramid in it. It's upside down. And the rank and file is on the top, and the trustees are on the bottom. You can't get lower than a trustee. A trustee is the lowest, the least powerful human being in Alcoholics Anonymous. And some of them believe that, and some of him don't. But again, I judge no man. So, there's no reason why AA should work. The original alcohol board kept on telling Bill, you don't have enough rules. And Bill kept saying the thing that we know is true. We know it today probably better than we ever have before. They've got alcoholism. Alcoholism will take care of it. It will school them. They don't need any other beating. They're getting the big beating. And no one can beat them like alcoholism can. So I ask you during today, please don't take anything I say as an indictment. I'm going to share how I've taken the steps. That's what I'm gonna tell you about. And I don't pretend and I've done some stuff that's probably different from you. You've probably done some things that you haven't done. Some stuff that is different from me, but I don' t think I know any better than you. the steps as seen by Dr. Silkworth Silkworth saw them as something he referred to as moral psychology that they felt for a long time in the treatment of alcoholism that some form of moral psychology which I never understood until the last couple of years I never understand what moral psychology was I had been in psychotherapy for 18 years by the time I got to AA I was going to be dead but I was gonna understand it And I'm not putting therapy down. It's great stuff. It says on page 133 of our book, if you need a doctor, go get one. I got no beef with therapy. My colossal blunder is that I was trying to treat my alcoholism with psychotherapy, which is like showing up at a gunfight with a knife once a week, you know, and just getting this colossal ass whooping. Just whooped, whooped. But doing good work in therapy. But just getting creamed because I was tried to treat this three-fold illness, this bizarre physical reaction to alcohol, general anesthetic, coupled with this weird, weird thinking that turned into this spiritual tapeworm, this soul sickness, this cancer in my heart that near to killed me. And what I got after a while since the whole purpose of this exercise, this is AA is such not a self-help group. It is the antithesis of the whole notion of self-health. One of my favorite people I'll be talking about today who's no longer with us, he died sober with over 20 years, my friend Howard Cooper, who I just adored. When I was really new, I was six months sober. He was an old-timer, and I was at the AA feed for Thanksgiving, you know, hell, right? I'm supposed to be at the head of a magnificent table with my admiring family, who are all like this, you Know, by that time. And there I am, you Now, at the AAA trough, you Know. So, you know, witnessing the miracle. I was so happy to be there. And Howard walked up to me and said, how are you? And I went, fine. And he said, you don't have to be fine for me. And I just broke down and blubbered and he held me. I just, oh man, did I need to not be fine for a minute. It was just that, you know, and when I started to find out, well, the thing that Howard told me, he was a Skid Row bum, ex-Skid Row bum who had been thrown out of the Salvation Army, which is, you Know, a personal best for anybody. He said the first, you know, those little, I don't know if you have them out here. But when people sell stuff on the street, they sell books with the cover ripped off for a quarter or something like that. And down on Skid Row, he said the first thing the guys do is they get the self-help books. They go and they spend because they think they can think their way off of Skid row. And I've never � I've heard Alcoholics Anonymous in the press referred to as a self-helped group. I've seldom heard anything further from the truth. Since our whole society seems to be driven trying to drive home one simple fact, you can't help yourself. If you continue to try to run this thing on self-will or self-propulsion, you're going to trade yourself out. It's like those stockbrokers who keep just trading you. Ding, ding, ding. Sorry all your money is gone, but you did great. It's the same thing as alcoholism. You just get traded out until there's nothing left. And when Bill went to the Oxford Group after his friend showed up at his home and had gotten religion, and he started going to the Oscar Group, the Oxford group had four things that they called the four absolutes. And they believed in absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love. Bill writes about, in Not God, this quote is printed, the principles of honesty, purity, unselfishness and love are as much a goal of AA members and are as well practiced by them as any other group of people. Yet we found that when the word absolute was put in front of these attributes, they either turned people away by the hundreds or gave them a temporary spiritual inflation resulting in collapse. the average alcoholic just couldn't stand the pace and got nowhere what a what a beautiful expression of it because the only thing i ever did absolutely was i got absolutely loaded absolutely and you were absolutely a moron by the time i got there those were the absolutes as understood by scott redmond and uh um one of the things i love and i think that Bill would get a tremendous kickoff. As a matter of fact, there's a tape where he even talks about it. There's a table where he talks about the writing of the book and he says, I understand that certain people have started to kind of iconize the big book. You know, that a friend of mine, you know, knows a guy who has a little shrine with a first edition, you know, in the corner. And they wrote it as a fundraising tool. These guys were trying to put some dough together and they were writing it chapter by chapter. And And they go, give us money. And they'd go, no. I mean, it was like, and at the same time, they knew that they had to get out a text. But Bill was a promoter. You know, I'm a Bill trying to be a Bob. You know? I don't know if you've ever been in a room full of Bobs, but it's a snore. I mean it's just, it's an old story. It's a big snore, and without him we'd be dead. We'd be death because it would just be all Bills, a bunch of self-promoting, you know, blabbermouth boneheads like me. I mean, I'm just, I am, Ima Bill aspiring to be as bobbish as I possibly can be. So, Bill had a talk. They had written the first four chapters and now he had to go write chapter five. And he realized, this is it. I mean, I'm going to have to put this thing down. I'm gonna have to do it now. I have to now codify what we're doing. He had a conversation with some friends of his as it's outlined in the historical material and they had, so they put together what they had been doing in sort of a six-step thing. I used to think because of the mention of the six-stepp program in the big book in one of the personal stories that there was actually a six step. It was just a smaller piece of thing, you know just half this size with six steps and in fact, it wasn't codified in that way. It's something they came up with and say, well, apparently this is what we've been doing. And in AA Comes of Age, Bill describes the beginning experience of having to sit down with us. He says, so the job until we reached the famous Chapter 5, up to that time I had done my own story and had drafted three more chapters. There is a solution more about alcoholism than we agnostics. We now realize we had enough background, enough window dressing material, and at this point we had to tell our program of recovery from alcoholism how it really worked. The backbone of the book would have to be fitted in right there. Sprawling on his bed and in anything but spiritual mood, one evening Wilson poised his yellow pencil above the school tablet propped before him. Quickly, lest he block, he scrolled the words out how it works across the top of the page, then paused to meditate about the six-step procedure with his and his associates at the previous meeting had agreed pretty well summed up what they had learned from the Oxford group. One, we admitted we were licked, that we were powerless over alcohol. Two, we made an inventory of our defects or sins. Three, sins, what an attractive word. Three, we confessed or shared our shortcomings with another person in confidence. Four, we laid restitution to all those we had harmed by our drinking. Five, we tried to help other alcoholics with no thought of reward in money or prestige. Six, we prayed to whatever God we thought there was for power to practice these precepts. And that's what he wrote. And then he sat and he wrote his draft, which I'm going to read in a second, his original draft of the fifth chapter of the book, which is different, considerably different than the fifth Chapter of the Book as it exists. And then one of the things which I just, only in Alcoholics Anonymous could this have happened. After he finished writing, a friend of his who he sponsored came over with a newcomer barely dry three months. and he writes this is again in A.A. Comes of Age I was greatly pleased with what I had written I read them the new version of the program now the 12 steps Howard and his friend reacted violently so there's a guy there's Puke with 3 months going I don't like that why 12 steps so this newcomer busted his chops He says, why 12 steps? They demanded. You've got too much God in those steps. They'll scare people away. And then they said, what do you mean by getting those drunks down on their knees when they have to ask for all their shortcomings removed? And this had to be the guy with three months. This is my favorite. Who wants all their Shortcomings Removed Anyhow? So, only in Alcoholics Anonymous are Deity Bill Wilson's there. And he goes, the new guy. The new guy walks in and says, ah, this. Ah. I don't like that. And Bill started changing it. I want to ask my friend Brent to come up and join me for a second. And what I want Brent to do is read Chapter 5, and what he's going to do is he's gonna stop when I tap him on the shoulder. Every time we reach a point where the original draft was different, and I'm gonna tell you what the original draft said. So just to show you how much it... This was from the original draft that was sent around to the groups before the groups had their input. Groups. I mean two groups. Come a little closer in here. And this is how the original draft changed from what Bill wrote and input from the newcomer and some other people in what we wound up with today. Chapter 5, How It Works. Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Our directions. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault. They seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous... A way of life. Their chances are less than average. There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest. Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now. If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, then you are ready to take certain steps. You are ready to follow directions. At some of these, we balked. At someof these, you may balk. We thought we could find an easier, softer way. You may think you can find an easier or softer way, but we could not. We doubt if you can. With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely. Remember that we deal with alcohol. Remember that you are dealing with alcohol, cunning, baffling, powerful without help. It is too much for us. It is two years ago. Too much for you. But there is one who has all power. That one is God. May you find him now. You must find him. Now half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. You stand at the turn. Point. We asked his protection and care with complete abandon. Throw yourself under his protection and care. Here are the steps we took which are suggested as a program of recovery. Now we think you can take it. Here Are The Steps We Took Which Are Suggested As Your Program Of Recovery. One, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol that our lives had become unmanageable. Two, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Three, made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him to the care and direction of God as we understood him for made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves five admitted to God to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs six were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character were entirely willing that God remove all these effects of character seven humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings humbly on our knees asked him to remove our shortcomings, holding nothing back. Eight, made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. Willing to make complete amends to them also. Nine, made direct amends to such people wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others. Ten, continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. Eleven, sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. Having had a spiritual experience as the result of this course of action, we try to carry this message to others, especially alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. Twelve, having had a Spiritual Awakening as a result of these steps, we try that carry this Message to Alcoholics and to Practice These Principles in All Our Affairs. Many of us exclaim... You may exclaim. What an order! I can't go through with it. Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection. Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas. Have been designed to sell you three pertinate ideas. A, that we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives. A, that you are an alcoholic and cannot manage your own life. B, that probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism. Probably no humanpower can relieve your alcoholism C, that God could and would if he were sought C,that God can and will And then the next line which is no longer in the chapter at all If you are not convinced of these vital issues You ought to re-read the book to this point or else throw it away Thank you Brent Brent was saying before, Bill probably put that in because he probably thought, well, they'll throw the book away, but then they'll have to come by and buy another one. It's kind of a marketing tool. I would have thrown mine away as fast as I would've just... That sucker would have sailed, baby. Really glad they took that up. the use of the word you versus we and i is is unbelievably it's stunning to me thank god what a great thing what a great think that they turn that corner you know and it's mirrored throughout the whole book right through to the family after where it talks about no alcoholic likes to be told that they can't drink nobody i mean in the world of temperance and this was you know a huge turn from the Washingtonians and the Oxford group. Nobody wants to be proselytized. Nobody wants to be told what they can and can't do, especially a drunk. There are a lot of attempts that I made in my life to be rid of the alcoholic dilemma. Nothing ever worked for me except for the 12 steps of AA. Judaism didn't work for me. As a matter of fact, I couldn't possibly have even been an alcoholic because I was Jewish. Jews do not drink because it might dull the pain. You don't want to waste any agony opportunity. And one of the beautiful things in our book that it talks about over and over again is it doesn't argue. They refuse to argue when priests come to AA, when ministers, when rabbis, when Buddhist monks come here And it says in our book, it says it over and over again, and it says that in chapter 7, don't argue with them. Don't tell them you know God better than them. They can quote the Bible chapter and verse, say to them, you know this, but you are yellow in color. We seem to know God in a way we're able to bring that higher power's power to bear in away that's released us from the cycle of spree and remorse, and you haven't. I'm not saying I know God better than you. I'm saying I just, I'm doing something that you're not doing yet. And it talks about never ever arguing with a drunk. One of the things in the book that I can't believe that they didn't change, which I always get a huge kick of it, is there's many, many lists of promises throughout the entire big book. My favorite thing, and I always when I'm having a tough time in my life, when I'm having a tough time wondering whether or not I can accomplish certain things in my life. I always like to go back to the list of what people commonly call the promises in the middle of the ninth step. And one of the things I'm going to talk about today, because the inception of AA really, you can date it from the minute that Dr. Bob started working his ninth step, they really knew how important this amend step was going to be. And really, they give them kind of more than any other place in the book, the most different kinds of things you can do, examples of different actions you can take. They really spend a lot of time on the ninth step and talk about how important it is to be thorough there because Dr. Bob really didn't stop drinking until he made those rounds that night after the last binge. So I really always try to remember that AA's inception really dates from when our co-founder finally jumped that fence. He was scared that people would know he was a drunk. And they promise, they say you will experience a freedom from fear of financial insecurity. It was 1937. Global financial collapse. People diving off buildings. People, grown men selling apples for a nickel in the street. If there had been a PR guy involved in this, he would have said, don't do that, don't doing that. Promise them anything. Promise them any thing. But don't, don' t do that. it's the most outlandish, outrageous thing they could have possibly told people that were going to happen. I love my mother's stories about the Depression because she gets poorer every time she talks about it. We ate the shower curtains. But I know it was bad. I know It was bad and you couldn't really, in terms of promotion, I don't think any PR guy in his right mind would have let that stick, but they did. Step one, I'm powerless over alcohol. My life has become unmanageable. Two, I have come to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity. There are no written instructions in the big book of AA on how to work the first two steps. There are written specific instructions on how to take every other step in the Big Book of AA. There are not specific written instructions on how to take the first two. A lot of people do a lot of different kinds of writing and exercises on the first two steps, and I think they're all fabulous. I did them when I was new. I just can't imagine any exercise that anybody could do to get closer to God where you could say, well, that's not a good idea. I think there are all great ideas. When you read the first three pages of chapter five, by the time you get to the middle of page 60, it says our description of the alcoholic the chapters of the agnostic and our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas so if you've read the first three chapters the chapters on alcoholism the chapter of the Agnostic four and our Personal Adventures Before and After I'm not sure what that means does that mean before I got sober after I got sobre or the personal stories in the front of the book at the back of the but I don't much really care but whatever that means if I given that some thought if I've read the first four chapters about giving some thought to those personal adventures it says here that it should make clear three basic concepts. Now, of course, in what we just read, it says if you don't think you're an alcoholic, reread the book up to this point or throw it away. But what they wound up with, it should made clear three ideas. A, that we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives. B, that probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism. And C, that God couldn't. What if he were sought? Being convinced we were at step three. So somewhere in those three pertinent ideas, I am able to take those first two steps on whatever level And on the first level I took them on, I took him on a very primitive level compared to, I mean, how was I to really appreciate the unmanageability of my life until not only I wrote it down in the form of an inventory, but then had to go and take responsibility for it and apologize and make amends. I mean I want to tell you the level I was able to take those first two steps with the help and support of that other work was vastly, vastly bigger, huger. And if I continue to take inventory and do that work, my appreciation of those first two steps will increase. I won't become part of the frozen chosen, the advanced course in Alcoholics Anonymous where I start losing touch with that. Anytime I hear a person with time get to a podium and say, geez, I feel brand new again, I always say to myself, because I judge no man, I always stay to myself. No, you don't know, you know, no, you might feel like crap. I'm not telling you you don't feel like crap. You might feel horrible, but you don' t feel new. And if you think you do, you're not spending any time with new people. And again, I'm no trying to diminish your agony. You might fee worse than you've ever felt in sobriety, but you're no shaking alcohol out of your spinal fluid. Every part of your face is no moving in a different direction. You're no a crap magnet. You know how it seems like any crap in the universe just finds its way to a newcomer, you're like a crap magnet, you know? So I'm not saying you don't feel bad, but you don'T feel that bad. And I always say to myself, because I'm so nonjudgmental, I just make evaluations, not judgments. What? That you're probably not spending any time with any. I had a guy in the back of my car the other night. I met him, my home group as a panel at a wonderful rehab in our area, county rehab, just glorious. And this guy's sitting in the back of my car, and just a sweetheart, just a great guy. And he explained to me that his four brothers and three sisters and both his parents were dead from alcoholism. They had either drunken themselves to death, overdosed, or had put a gun in their mouth. Nine people. And he looked at me completely honestly, and he said, I don't want to die. And I knew for sure. I mean, I just knew it. The first and the second step, again, because I'm doing this work, hit me in my heart again. I said to myself, I can't save you. I am powerless over your alcoholism, over mine. I can pick you up, take you to the meeting. I can sit you down. I'll lend you five bucks. I'll do anything I can to help you, anything. The one thing I can do is I can save you, I cannot save your life. And I don't know if it's going to happen. If you're not, is it going to be ten people in that family that wind up dying? I don't know. Number one, I believed him when he said he didn't want to die. I don'T KNOW IF HE'LL BE ABLE TO ACTUALLY BE RESPONSIBLE TO THAT WISH. AND I DON'T KNOW if he's going to weather the horrible initial storm, that terrible, wooden, hollow, dead time before God pries your jaws open and breathes life back into you. I DONT KNOW. But I know that I felt the first and second step on that incredible level. Now, if I'm not doing inventory, I'm already pissed off I have to pick up the guy. I'm pissed off, why me? Am I the only guy involved in this program? You know, all the crap. All the crap, all of the crap without the 10th step. There's no 12th step for me, right? So because I'm in the car and I'm that pissed off about being there, I can hear him and go, I don't know. I love you. I'll pick you up tomorrow night for a meeting. That's the limited involvement. I've heard a guy say in AA, and I love when he says this, it seems that a sponsor's job is to keep the newcomer entertained until God takes over. And I love that because ultimately, ultimately that's it. So when I work at Steps with a guy, I get up to this point, I ask him if he's read that literature. If he has read that literature, I say, are you an alcoholic? If he says yes, I Say, okay, is your life unmanageable? Well, I don't know. Well, can you do some controlled crack smoking? No. Okay, then your life's unmanageable in the area of crack. Can we move on now? and so that first step and I don't care you know I don' t care if a guy really believes it or not I don''t go do you really believe it I don ''t give a crap if he really believes let's go let's get going here because whatever level you are taking this on now I believe it has been my personal experience that is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger the more you get this thing then step two came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity Not would, not should. I don't get to make an appointment. It's possible. Okay? It says there's a couple of lists in the big book. I love them in the first couple of chapters. One's a list of things that people say about us when we're drinking, and one's a lista of things we say about ourself. The things that People Say About Us, which I love, is, oh, you'd think he'd get sober for a minute. They tell him if he stopped drinking, if he'd got drunk, he'd die, and there he is lit up again. You know, all of that stuff. And then there's stuff we say about ourselves. It won't burn me this time, so here's how. For God's sake, how did I ever get started again? Or my personal favorite, I'll stop after the sixth drink. Now, I'm also a man who came home one day and emptied an entire bottle of wine into a 32-ounce tumbler and told my wife I was having a glass of wine. So by the time I get to the sixth drinking, things get really interesting. and another fabulous one what's the use anyhow boy don't you just love that one at any rate it then says on the bottom of 24 when this sort of thinking is fully established in an individual with alcoholic tendencies let's say a person prone to the disease prone to this bizarre allergy normal people don't have that allergy my cousin Roz has never dreamt about walking into a palace made of cocaine My Uncle Milton has never dreamt about paddling down a river of beer in a canoe. I have. I have, I just want to tell you, normal people don't dream about drinking. They don't. I defy you to produce one normal person who dreams about drinking, about having pitons and scaling a bottle of bourbon. Normal people don' t dream about this. Alcoholics do. So if you're new and you're dreaming about drinking well welcome to AA. And you know, it's a funny thing about the general anesthetic I can't seem to get that out of my mind Let me tell you why it's so damned exciting For the same reason that I used to get excited When I was told that I needed dental surgery Normal people don't get excited about dental surgery Normal people don't go, oh, dental surgery, dental surgery. I'll tell you why. I leave out the middle. I go right from announcement of dental surgery to painkillers. I leaveout the surgery. It's the same reason I was able to, my wife and I before I got sober, a guy left us his car and we sold his car. And I know, and that was because We didn't have money for the rent. Big duh there. And I looked into my wife's eyes and I said, you know, I'm so sick of being a punk, irresponsible kid. Let's not borrow money. Let's stand on our own two feet. Let's sell the car. And my wife Nancy said, let's do. And it's for the same reason. It's for The Dental Surgery reason. I lead out the middle. I go from let's do the right thing to sell the car. I leave out Grand Theft Auto. I leave out forging the pink slip. I leave out looking behind me in the mirror. I leave out the whole thing. I leave out the surgery. I leave out the blood, the sutures, and the agony. And that's what they're talking about here. When this kind of thinking is fully established, why? Silkworth talks about why would they possibly drink considering the attendant misery that follows every time they do it. Not all the time. Every time they go through it. They do it! I got to tell you this story. This guy, who I sponsored for about 15 minutes, he was... I took him down to my sponsor's home group, my sponsor is Paul O., Dr. Paul, and I got him down there, and he was being 12-stepped by Dr. Paul, John A., Cliff R., this group, I mean, circuit speakers. He's surrounded by circuit speakers, I think he drank while he was talking to them, and they kept him sober for no seconds, like not a minute, you know? And I called them the next day all individually to let them know how powerful they were, said do you know that newcomer you talked last night, Cliff went oh yeah, how the hell is I said, you sent him reeling to a bar. Anyway, the guy's fabulously wealthy. I mean, the guys are fabulously wealthy, incredibly powerful guy. He's drunken himself out of his job, drunken itself off the face of the map. They're paying him $100,000 a month to stay away from the office. He gets sequestered on a privately owned Caribbean island by one of his friends so he won't drink. He stays sober until the day he gets off the island. He cannot stop drinking. He's dying. So I take him on. He gets me up to his house, and he says, I got it now. I got that. I said, what? He said, look what I bought. And he brings out one. There's about 100 copies of the original big, big book left, the big, Big Pressing of the large book, and there's about a hundred original copies left. He said seven grand in cash. I've got it, meaning I'm never going to drink again, right? I said wow, it looks perfect. He said that's right. There's no marks, and it's never even been opened. I said, so this has been handed down from loser to loser for 65 years. And now you've got the loser book. Don't open it. It'll drop in value. Don't. Don't Open That, Sucker. Man, once this kind of thinking is fully established in someone with alcoholic tendencies, they've probably placed themselves beyond human health. I love that, probably placed himself beyond human help. Now, it says on the first page of the fourth chapter of our book, and I love this, the first time my friend Larry ever read this, I'll tell you what he said. It says on The First Page of We Agnostics, to be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face. And it's tough. Die in a pool of my own urine? Spiritual life. Tough choice to make. And the first time that he, that my friend Larry ever read that sentence, he said to himself, well, how bad an alcoholic life is? What kind of alcoholic death are we talking about here? no normal person would ever think of how bad an alcoholic death that's dental surgery to me that's leaving out the middle it's the death part at any rate it says that if you have this bizarre physical reaction It's gotten mixed up with this weird thinking. By the time we get to We Agnostics, it says you have probably placed yourself beyond human help. Lack of power was our dilemma. And now I think lack of dilemma is our power pretty much, you know. We had to find a power by which we could live and it had to be a power greater than ourselves. Well, that's exactly what this book is about. its main object is to enable you to find a power greater than yourself that can solve your problem. Do I now believe or am I even willing to believe that there's a power greater than myself if a man can say that he does believe, or is even willing to believe? We emphatically assure him he's on his way. We don't say then, okay, write us a check, buy the following literature. We say, you're off. You hit the floor running, you've got full rights here. Now, if I say I've come to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity. And if the spiritual experience necessary for me staying alive is promised in the twelfth step, it says having had a spiritual experience as a result of these steps, then all step two really is is an admission of possibility, is coming out of the gate, is me saying, you know what? I really think this could happen for me. I don't really believe it. Me, I didn't really do it. I didn' t really believe i t, but look at the evidence. People are telling their stories here. Look at the demonstration around me, if any of this is true. There's something here. How many times have we heard people get to podiums and say, there was something there? I sensed something there, and it wasn't what was in their house. So for me, I really feel that step two has for me been a really big hoop to jump through, that it's an admission that this thing can happen for me and now I'm going to move forward. And the description of step three and the next two and a half pages in the big book for me are extraordinary. I want to talk about them a bit. I also want to talking about during the day about how I take the steps. In the morning, I take these steps in a kind of formal way for me. And the way I take my first two steps in the morning is I simply say, I am powerless. My life is unmanageable. I know that you will restore me to sanity. And those are my first two steps in the morning, and it's just great for me. I am powerless. My life is unmanageable, and I know that you will restore me to sanity. I know because it's happened, not every day. But it's happen, andI like it. I like the way it feels. You know, the pain is no longer the touchstone of spiritual growth for me, it's a touchstoneof spiritual growth. How many times, and you guys are part of such a powerful fellowship here with so much enthusiasm. How many time have I found myself doing things in AA because it really feels good? Because it's fun. Because I like it. Because I'm taking pleasure in it. I mean, for me, joy has become the touchstone of spiritual growth in a lot of ways for me. A friend of mine talks about surrender. He says he surrendered like Custer. All his men were dead. His horse was dead. And he was out of bullets, and five arrows were coming at his ass. And he said, I give up. And I get that. I can surrender that way. I absolutely get that, although a friend of mine says he only surrenders when his back is up against the wall and the wall's on fire. And I like that too. And I surrender when I'm in that kind of agony. But, you know, I also, at this point in my sobriety, for me, joy is a real big motivator. We absolutely insist on enjoying life. On page 62, there is what I believe the most succinct and exact description of the savage, uncivilized mindset of the alcoholic that I believe I have ever heard. Selfishness. Self-centeredness. That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven. Driven is not nudged or influenced. Driven implies under the lash of, in slavery too. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us seemingly without provocation, but we invariably, invariably means without variation, with no loopholes, always 100% of the time, find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self, which later placed us in a position to be hurt. I didn't get this. How could that be true? My aunt pinned my arms to my sides when I was a little kid so that I could be hit. How is that my fault? How did I make a decision based on myself? I didn�t. Is that excusable for her to do? Absolutely not. Completely unacceptable to treat a baby that way. What I didn�t get was the difference between the event and the resentment. Was the event my fault? No. Was the resentment my fault, you bet. Were the next 19 years of doing anything I could do to character assassinate her, to make her miserable, to deny her joy, to deny the goodwill and respect of her fellows? Absolutely. What was going to kill me? The event of the resentment. You know the answer to that. Did I make decisions based on self which later placed me in a position to be hurt? No question about it. The thing I didn't get, now I'm Jewish. I had a problem with Nazis. Call me a nut. Okay? Had I made decisions based on self, which later placed me in a concentration camp? No! Was the event my fault? No! But the fact that when I heard somebody with a German accent, I instantly hated them, wouldn't talk to them, was that my fault?" You bet. was my self-pity and my opportunism for my self pity and playing the victim because of it my fault? Absolutely. The difference between the event and the resentment and what freedom to get that. Because, you know, I've been confronted with a lot of people in sponsorship who have gone through horrible stuff. And I can't tell them they haven't. I sponsored one guy who was systematically sexually abused as a kid. He was abandoned by his parents with the abuser and forced to live with the abuser for years. Now, is the event his fault? No. Has he been damaged? Yes. Has it changed my relationship with him? Yes. If he gets into an abusive relationship, one thing I do with this guy that I don't do with other guys I sponsor, I sit him down and say, you cannot be there. I will not allow it. He never had anybody to protect him. So I do that with him. It's great. It's just great. Did he place himself in a position to be hurt by being filled with self-pity? Absolutely. The difference between the event and the resentment. And one of the things, and this has been very interesting for me because I've taken it seriously, he, along with a couple other guys I sponsor, grew up in terrible alcoholic homes. They must sponsor other drunks or they'll die. They have to do this work on some level. There's an interesting twist for them that a lot of other people don't have. that have because of their upbringing they have a notion somehow that the drunk is constantly trying to get over on them and take advantage of them why because that's what happened their whole lives so one of the things i have to redo together is we work the 10th step and say no he's not this you're taking his alcoholism personally is to get them free from that event so that they can out there get out there and be in the world of aa but it's but but i could as a sponsor i could say, oh, stop doing that. Well, they can't stop doing it. But we can deal with it. We can say, hey, you know what? This guy's just really sick. This has nothing to do with you. Is this too hard for you? If this is too hard f�r you, let's do something else. And it's, you know, a couple of times it has been too hard form, but mostly they've been able to stay in it, stay moment to moment and get the work done. On page 61, one of my favorite things is they talk about the alcoholic in his cups or her cups taking one of two basic ways of manipulating people. And that is to either bully, and that's the way I fought. I'm a loomer. I like to loom. I like the loom so the light's behind me and I'm casting a shadow on her. I'm an yeller and a loemer or a crier. Love to cry. Tyranny of helplessness works for me really good. I like loom, I liketo cry. If I can work some lumen in crying into the same fight, I'm in the bonus round. And it says there in step three that an alcoholic will tend to either be really magnanimous or a bully, a hostile, cursing, insane bully in order to get their way. Now, my usual M.O., usual M?O. is I'm a sterling human being. I'm hell of a nice guy. Then if you don't do it my way, you should die in a flaming car crash. But out of the gate, and I never got it until when I ruined my sponsor read me that and I just went, and then it says, it basically says on that same page, admitting he may be somewhat at fault, he's sure that other people are more to blame. I'm wrong, but you're wrong.